12 days gone?

12 days since my last blog entry, I was thinking this morning what the hell have been doing the last 12 days that's hobby related, this month has really flown by. Let's see, I played my fellow Warhammer rookie, Felix over at the Oak Park store last tuesday, his Wood Elves versus my Empire, a close game that ended a solid draw, hoping to get back in there this week or get something happening at home this weekend.

I've been WIP on another 5 Empire Swordsmen, trying to batch paint to go a bit quicker, I save time with the base coating using this method for sure, its details that are the time sink. I need to get a little less particular on guys that are in a 25 man block, it's coming along, slowly but surely...I have 2 finished and 3 more to go from the current group, then only 8 more. I hope to have the 24 swordsmen complete, by mid next week, so I can move on to some handgunners. I am going to be hard pressed to get 2000 pts built and painted to my standard by the time Adepticon 08, rolls around in the spring. There is going to come a time in fall when the event schedule is posted that I am going to need to quit screwing around with multiple projects choose my events and hammer it out, as well as practice playing.

If I get time to work on anything on Sundays, its usually terrain and I got another modular hill done yesterday...I now have threehills, one woods and the Arcane Ruins built, I still have 2 woods and the new watch tower to go.

I was also messing around with my "Battle for Skull Pass" miniatures. I find the quality of these better than their 40K "Macragge" counter parts which is pretty cool, my intent with these was figure out a way to come up with a way to paint these fast and clean with three colors.. starting with everyone primed black. the goblins are pretty easy...snot green the face...give it a quick wash, red the eyes and spear handle and metal brush the shield and speartip, then give it a quick drybrush of fortress grey, Dwarfs are bit more complicated I am kind of stumped on how to do them..as they have alot more detail.. ideally I want a pair of 500 pt starter armies that are painted a solid TT standard just to have around, need to pick thier army books too.. I will post some pics later.

As far as 40K goes I haven't done jack, I still haven't finished my Assault Marines, and I want to get my Devastor Squad done after that, then dig into three Rhinos. As I am pretty much focused on the Fantasy right now, its not a big deal...As soon as Scott gets time to schedule our next round of Ultramarines VS Thousands Sons ( Which I am sure will be after he gets his hands on the new Chaos book) that will kick me in ass to spend a couple days on 40K.

I've been thinking alot about strategy and tactics for both games. I consider myself a serious strategy game player, so the mechanics of such in any game are important to me. Both games have a strong tactical phase in list creation, but the army list is far more powerful in 40K, putting the most firepower on a target per turn is base concept as I see it, (something my Ultramarines are aspiring to) Developing a list that accomplishes that is half the battle once you put your guys on the table. Since I don't like going with the formulatic list I constantly see for Marines ( 6 man Las/Plas squads), but small squads are definitely key so I am experimenting with 5 man squads in my list right now, which went very well for me when I played against some Dark Angels recently. my next goal is beat Scotts Ksons, good freaking luck there after my last slaughter against him., will see how the new lists go. I think my lists for Fantasy are solid, and since more of the tactical aspect of that revolves around movement, I need to practice, practice, practice.

10 Down, 58 to go!!

I continue to work on my Empire Army, here we have 9 Swordsmen, full command, + a Warrior Priest, a custom magnetized move tray and my first attempt at a free hand banner. I was trying to figure out how long this took me but I am at a loss, I am guessing it roughly takes me about 4-5 hours do 1 figure start to finish, that includes cleaning, building, priming, then painting, the miniature. I let them sit for about a week before sealing them with Dullcote. I dont work on these guys one at time however, as I spent about a month cleaning, assembling, and priming the entire 1000 points (68 models) of this army and now am into the painting..I definitely put more detail than necessary into some these guys given what you can see, but I am liking the way they are coming out.. This should get alot faster, no that I've got the color schemes down and now know what I want, I am shooting to get 9 more swordsmen done in time for my game next tuesday night, I gotten to batch painting them 3 at time and that method definitely saves time, it just depends on how much I obsess over the details. The move tray took about an hour start to finish, its a GF9 wooden tray, I took the dremel to it, beveled it and then based it






Here they are on my table, note the new GW terrain some Arcane Ruins, Citadel Woods, and modular hill in the background. I usually work on terrain one day a week, those woods take the longest by far and they still need work, eventually.

Empire Update

My scheduled game today got canceled so I spent my time getting these two fellows about finished up. Both are front row characters in my block of Swordsmen in my 1000 point Empire Army. A Warrior Priest and a Sergeant/ Duelist. I wasn't loving any of the available metal models for the Warrior Priest and the Sergeant in the State Troops box wields a great sword, a doesn't scream Sergeant to me. Both these guys are conversions from various kits. The Duelist's head and pistol are from the Pistolier/Outrider spure, the Torso is from a Knight, the running legs are from a Militia sprue and the sword from the Handgunners sprue. The Warrior Priest is head and body are from the Bretonian Man at Arms kit, with the gorget being left over from my general kit. the shield being from a state troops sprue and I can't remember where the Hammer is from, anyway I am liking both these guys quite a bit. I spent the last month assembling and priming the rest of my Empire Army so now that I am fully assembled and playable, I am just painting the full 1000 points before I increase my army size, Although I did buy the Empire Reinforcements Battalion which will push me way above 2000 points when I get it built..I want to play around with a Jade Wizard so I will probably build that and just keep painting for a couple months.